FAITHANDREASON in Solidarity with Black Lives Matter

Being shocked and outraged at the video of the deliberate, grinding murder of George Floyd by out of control police officers must be the wake-up call we literally cannot ignore. We were already shocked and outraged by the failure of the federal government to be responsive to the Covid 19 Pandemic which is killing humans by the hundreds of thousands. We are waking up to our flawed political and economic systems. Now, systemic racism is showing itself to be a historic pandemic of its own. 

At the funerals for George Floyd, we saw an outpouring of grief and determination we seldom see at such a scale. The Reverend Al Sharpton reminded us powerfully and eloquently of REAL faith working. His was a genuine, prophetic voice calling for Justice, “to roll down like water.” This was faith being authentic and legitimate, regardless of its specific tradition —Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist or one of the other, “life-affirming” historical religions. 

Religion, at its best, defends the poor, cares for the sick, welcomes the stranger and promotes the common good. 

Faith fails us when it approves and gives license to our hatreds, our resentments, our prejudices and our fears. When it does so, it turns toxic to the human spirit within and to the human community without. When faith fails, it legitimizes the blood lust that can allow us to crush the life out of a human being in 8 minutes and 46 seconds.

Faith fails us when, in the periods of assumed “normality,” its voice is silent while the wheels of injustice grind away at people’s lives day after day after day. We hold our tongues even when we have to look away so that the images of human cruelty won’t make us sick to our stomachs.  

We hold our tongues because we are afraid of social and economic sanctions. Then, when public outrage forces us to feel and empathize the next time, tears burn our eyes while hypocrisy leaves its bitter taste on the ends of our tongues.

To hate in the name of God; to harm in the name of God; to kill in the name of God is hideous sacrilege. 

Historical Jesus scholars are making us aware that Jesus and his friends and collaborators were living in resistance to and defiance of imperial suppression. 

FaithAndReason is the creation of The D.L. Dykes, Jr. Foundation, and we stand in solidarity with those first century resisters as we do with today’s resisters, “Black Lives Matter.”